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How to Spot a Bootleg/Pirated DVD
Being the popular form of media DVD's have become very common all over the world. For a while you used to see VCD's being sold by bootleggers claiming they were real DVDs. This ploy worked out really well for them. Not only were VCD's pretty cheap for them to produce but most people did not even notice the scam since VCD's would in fact work in most all standard DVD players. However things have became cheap and easy enough on the DVD front that bootleggers do not have to use the VCD any longer. Though I am sure there are still a slim few who still do it.
Again the big problem here is that you no longer can often tell just by looking if a DVD is a bootleg or not. They are able to recreate every aspect of the official product to produce an exact mimic of the real product or create something very official looking in its own right. No longer is there an easy visual check to tell if its real or not unless you know company names. In fact that right there is still at least one obvious way to find the real deal. If a DVD is licensed go and find out who licensed it. You can easily find places on the internet that will list official releases in different area's all over the world if you invest the time to find out. If the copy you want to buy is not released by the company that holds the license for the area it is coming out of then its not legit. And PLEASE beware of eBay!! They have more bootlegged products up then legit most of the time.
Another good way to spot the Bootlegged versions is as follows. Most bootlegs are Region Free aka All Regions or Region 0. Many also will come with Chinese subtitles, often English Subtitles(accuracy on such things vary) and the Japanese audio track. Depending on who bootlegged it there may be several other subtitle languages included as well. The higher the number of subs included the less likely it is official. Official product often are limited in the subtitles they offer and do not offer such a wide variety as some of the bootlegs do. This does NOT make the bookleg a better product. There are many bootlegs that have very poor or inaccurate translations that don't always make sense. Many also use fansubs since they are fast and easy for them to get. They don't check those for accuracy either.
Of course another dead giveaway is the price of these knock-off products. If the pricing looks too good to be true then it likely is. You will RARELY find a series set for the price of 1 or 2 disks or a movie for $8. If a product comes straight from Japan it will be plenty expensive and not the price of a nomal DVD my most peoples standards. So if the product is not available in the USA by means other then importing then expect a high price. I am talking 30 - 60 dollars for a Japanese version DVD. These products are better quality and therefore equal bigger price.
Also look at how many episode are on an anime disk. Most series over here have between 2 - 5 episodes per disk. On rare occasion you will find 6. However if you are finding one with 8 or more per disk or and entire series on 2 or 3 disks then you may want to be wary of buying it. And remember folks Fansubs and Digisubs are never legal products for sale.